The children's games. Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Pieter Brueghel the Elder,

1560, oil on wood, 118 × 161 cm
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum

---

Serie der sogenannten bilderbogenartigen Gemälde, Szene: Die Kinderspiele. Pieter Bruegel d. Ä.

1560, Öl auf Holz, 118 × 161 cm
Wien, Kunsthistorisches Museum

----

Children's Games is an oil-on-panel by Flemish renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder, painted in 1560. It is currently held and exhibited at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The children's games , detail

Description

This painting, mentioned for the first time by Karel van Mander in 1604, was acquired in 1594 by Archduke Ernest of Austria. It has been suggested that it was the first in a projected series of paintings representing the Ages of Man, in which Children's Games would have stood for Youth. If that was Bruegel's intention, it is unlikely that the series progressed beyond this painting, for there are no contemporary or subsequent mentions of related pictures.[1]

The children, who range in age from toddlers to adolescents, roll hoops, walk on stilts, spin hoops, ride hobby-horses, stage mock tournaments, play leap-frog and blind man's bluff, perform handstands, inflate pigs' bladders and play with dolls and other toys.See details below They have also taken over the large building that dominates the square: it may be a town hall or some other important civic building, in this way emphasizing the moral that the adults who direct civic affairs are as children in the sight of God. This crowded scene is to some extent relieved by the landscape in the top left-hand corner; but even here children are bathing in the river and playing on its banks.

The artist's intention for this work is more serious than simply to compile an illustrated encyclopaedia of children's games, though some eighty particular games have been identified.See details below Bruegel shows the children absorbed in their games with the seriousness displayed by adults in their apparently more important pursuits. His moral is that in the mind of God children's games possess as much significance as the activities of their parents. This idea was a familiar one in contemporary literature: in an anonymous Flemish poem published in Antwerp in 1530 by Jan van Doesborch (nl), mankind is compared to children who are entirely absorbed in their foolish games and concerns.[2]

The games

Starting from bottom left, the games may be identified as follows:

Number	Game	Notes
01	Playing with dolls
02	Playing 'Holy Mass'	Small liturgical objects used at Mass and Liturgies
03	Water gun and owl on support	Shooting water at a bird
04	Wearing masks	Wearing disguises for fun
05	Swing	The classic hanging seat
06	Climbing a fence	A popular pastime with neighbour's fences
07	Handstand	There are many variations of handstands, but all that matters is balance
08	Play the "knot"	Bending the body to contorted positions
09	Somersault	Flipping and rolling forwards, backwards, or sideways
10	Fence riding	Again, a fence game
11	Mock wedding	It is exactly at the diagonal centre of the panel. Perhaps an irony of the holy sacrament, or a reference to the main event that allows conception of children
12	Passing through kicking legs	Painful but dynamic
13	Blind Man's Bluff	Blind fortune
14	Playing with birds	Ever popular
14b	Making hats with twigs	Basket weaving
15	Soap bubbles	Still a popular pastime, Bruegel shows children blowing bubbles with clay pipes and verifies soap bubbles being used as entertainment for at least 400 years
16	Shell bobbin	A flying spinneret made of nut shells
17	The "Toton"	Forerunner of the roulette and dice games
17b	Toy animal with leash	A stone dog of sorts
18	Knucklebones	Game of very ancient origin, played with five small objects, originally the "knucklebones" (actually the astragalus: a bone in the ankle, or hock) of a sheep, which are thrown up and caught in various ways
19	Mock baptismal	Re-enacting the procession of adults carrying home a baby just baptized. The blue hood symbolises deception ("hooding the husband" meant to cuckold him, as shown in Bruegel's Netherlandish Proverbs).
20	Morra	A hand game - similar to rock, paper, scissors - that dates back thousands of years to ancient Roman and Greek times
21	Piñata	A papier-mâché or other type of container that is decorated, filled with toys and or candy and then broken, usually as part of a ceremony or celebration
22	Walk on stilts	Walking poles equipped with steps for the feet to stand on, they can be short (like here) or long (see below)
23	Play leapfrog	Vaulting over each other's stooped backs
24	Mock tournaments	Competitions of various kind
25	The "Pope's seat"	Holding the child by gripping hands
26	Hobby-horse	Riding a wooden hobby horse made of a straight stick with a small horse's head
27	Stirring excrements with a stick	Not a healthy game
28	Playing the flute and the drum	Playing simple music with basic instruments, always popular with kids
29	The simple roll hoop	Children and adults around the world have played with hoops, twirling, rolling and throwing them throughout history
30	Shouting into a barrel from a hole	The many uses of a barrel
31	The hoop with bells	A variation of rolling the hoop
32	Riding the barrel	With barrel vaulting, another popular play
33	Hat throwing	Throw them through a child's open legs, or see who throws farthest
34	Raisinbread man	A man-shaped loaf of bread, offered during wakes or at Christmas
35	The penalty of "bumbouncing"	Bouncing someone's buttocks on planks

Number	Game	Notes
36	Ball made with an inflated pig's bladder	Inflating a pig's bladder to create a balloon
37	How many goat horns?	The child must guess with how many fingers he was slapped by the other riding him
38	To play shop	On the wooden plank below the funnel Bruegel inscribed "BRUEGEL 1560" Red pigment was made from scraping bricks and was most famous from Antwerp.
39	Playing Tiddlywinks	Played with small discs called "winks", a pot, and a collection of squidgers. The children use a "squidger" (a disk) to propel a wink into flight by pressing down on a wink, thereby flicking it into the air: the objective of the game is to score points by sending one's own winks into the pot
40	Building (a well)	Like sandcastles on a beach, building is ever popular
41	Pulling hair	A game or a fight?
42	Catching insects with a net	Not only butterflies
43	Playing the scourge	Not a safe game
44	Playing marbles	Ancient and still going strong nowadays
45	Pitch and toss	The players each take a coin and take turns tossing them towards the wall: the coin the closest to the wall wins
45b	Twirling a hat on a stick	Clowns do it regularly
46	Making a procession	Popular among children and adults, in diverse applications
47	Playing the porter	or goalkeeper?
48	Who's got the ball?	Hiding the ball and guessing who has it
49	Riding piggyback	Still going strong, riding on someone's shoulders
50	Singing door-to-door	Especially now at Christmas, with carols
51	Bonfire	Lighting a fire, a dangerous but ever-practiced activity
52	Riding a broom	A variation of hobby-horse, but with many players
53	Pushing a wall	good for exercising muscles
54	Hide-and-seek	Or "hide and go seek", a game in which a number of players conceal themselves in the environment, to be found by one or more seekers
55	The "devil's tail" or the "snake"	Role play as a street game
56	Grappling	A basic form of wrestling
57	The "devil chained"	Role play as a street game
58	Run, jump on a cellar's door	Noisy and unsafe
59	Bowling	Players attempt to score points by rolling a ball along a flat surface, either into pins or to get close to a target ball
60	The token	Running and handing off the baton to the next runner
61	Throwing walnuts	Perhaps a variation of bowling or bocce, hitting an assembled cluster of nuts
62	High stilts	Walking on long poles
63	Pole vaulting	Exercising on a horizontally fixed bar
64	Balancing a stick on a finger	A clownish game of balance
65	Put up a show	Enacting a play
66	Spinning tops	Using toys that can be spun on an axis, balancing on a point
67	The trolleys	Baskets moving on a line
68	Flying a ribbon on a stick	Letting a piece of cloth fly in the wind from a stick
69	Whom shall I choose?	A girl selects her "baby" from a group of friends under a blanket
70	Urinating	Technically, not quite a game but practiced often
71	Bocce	In teams, throwing the bocce balls closest to the jack ball
72	Pirouetting skirts	Swirling the girls' skirts round and round
73	Climbing a tree
74	Swimming	A healthy recreational exercise, enjoying a full-body workout
75	Diving	Jumping or falling into water is always lots of fun for children
76	Floating with an inflated pig's bladder	A sheep's bladder was also used, to float on top of it or to play water games
77	"Dethroning the King"	Role play
78	Playing with sand	Building castles and digging holes
79	Coil tournament	A fight of knights
80	Rattles	Noisy musical game

References

G. Arpino & P. Bianconi, L'opera completa di Bruegel, Rizzoli (1967). (Italian)
Cf. Pietro Allegretti, Brueghel, Skira, Milano 2003. ISBN 0-00-001088-X (Italian)

External links

Children's Games at the KHM (German)
Kunsthistorisches Museum's Official Website
Bosch Bruegel Society
99 works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Creative Bruegel laid the foundation of the Netherlands School (Russian)
"Bruegel". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.

----

----

Paintings, List

Zeichnungen, Gemälde

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/"
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

World

Index

Hellenica World - Scientific Library